August 17, 2016

"'If there’s one thing a girl with a bad boyfriend has,' Dombek notes,' it’s the moral upper hand in the religion of mental health.' Here, she
turns to the corner of the Internet she calls the 'narcisphere,' a
collection of blogs and forums in which women, mostly, solidify a sense
of their superior powers of empathy and raise their collective
consciousness about surviving narcissism and about narcissism-induced
P.T.S.D. 'If you are an especially giving person, warns the Internet,
you are a prime target for narcissists,' Dombek writes. The narcisphere
has a gendered inverse, which some call the manosphere and which is
dedicated to teaching men how to dominate women by feigning
self-confidence. This is the realm of pickup artistry. It is much worse
than the narcisphere.... The story of the
narcissist is, in part, a story of the people around him pleading for
empathy, insisting that we should all care more about one another. And
yet somehow this account of the world has become 'a story that divides
us, by defining empathy as something we have and others lack,' Dombek
writes. Perhaps in pathologizing narcissism, we have forgotten how
perilous it is to constantly diagnose other people. In the end, what 'The Selfishness of Others' lays out most clearly is not the danger of
narcissism but, rather, the danger of any particular world view that
requires, for the sake of consistency, its owner to believe that she is
good."

That is the first popular article on the dangers of Narcissists that makes a discussion that is anywhere close to being a correct description. It has nothing to do with selfishness, which is totally normal compared to pretending to be sacrificially loving everyone.

Narcissism is usually a man using manipulative power to demand that all others serve the self image of the narcissist or be destroyed.

It has become trendy to apply psychopathology to what is, in fact, anything that annoys us about another person. Lack of recognition of our own flaws makes us very intolerant of others'. In short, immaturity.

RE: The New York Times. I fail to see how anyone thinks there is quality writing at the NYT. When I see a NYT byline I only read the story with a cautious eye. The National Enquirer or the Sacramento Bee are better at journalism. One could fire the complete staff at the NYT and replace them with 10th graders and the output would be 10 times more professional. These are the elite who are corrupt because they have lost the common touch. These days it is much better to pick the story before you pick the outlet.

The only way to be successful with women is to listen to them and not react just logically. Respond with thoughts. Small thoughts that show you love them. Constantly. It why women like dance. The whole process is there.

If someone says the word patriarchy they are not your friend. They are on that soft Marxist path to make you miserable. So the exception to the rule is never say " You are such a sweet Marxist" run as fast as you can away from that person and bolt your door and warn your kids.

Haven't read the piece yet, but looks like it describes a win-win situation, for men who get to be narcissists and women who get to feel superior. Of course, that doesn't account for the O's, narcissists who also think they are morally superior.

This is one of the ways that already poorly constructed diagnostic criteria from the DSM gets watered down at the novice level and enters the popular lexicon. Personality disorders are notoriously tricky to even describe let alone diagnose. The only one I've ever been able to pick up on relatively quickly is Borderline Personality, probably because it has such a distinct cluster of symptoms. The DSM is notorious for containing a lot of arbitrary criteria, like having to show 3 of some list of symptoms plus one of 2 plus being within specified timeframes. It's much more of a political book than a scientific one.

Oh, pish-posh (forgive my language...)! Women are every bit as narcissistic as men. Their version of narcissism just doesn't involve sexual predation very often, but it sure involves sucking every little thing in their orbit into their self-regard.

And once again, it pays to check original source materials. Go check any PUA web site. They never recommend lying about your feelings to the woman. Even with the opening approach, the true PUA is supposed to let the woman know that his interest is sexual.

I'm as far from being a PUA as possible, & have little moral sympathy for treating women like that. But, the misrepresentations of what that demimonde is all about are everywhere, especially among women's publications that exist to nurse grudges.

Wait, narcissism is a male thing now? The author has never tried dating in the Bay Area, I guess.

With regard to turning ordinary personality flaws into diagnoses, I agree with reservations. Narcissism was a description of a personality type before it was a diagnosis. Many people are in love with themselves to an unhealthy and off putting degree without rising to the level of psychiatric disorder.

My working assumption is that anyone who thinks they have a lot of empathy actually has a mood disorder. They recognize that the emotions they are feeling are not related to their current circumstances, and therefore look for an external cause. Since there is always someone else around with good reason to feel what the 'empathetic' person is feeling, they assume that they are picking up other people's emotions. The do not recognize that the emotions they feel are caused by their own disorder.

"In the end, what “The Selfishness of Others” lays out most clearly is not the danger of narcissism but, rather, the danger of any particular world view that requires, for the sake of consistency, its owner to believe that she is good."

That's an intelligent thought, and it makes me want to read the book even though it's not about something I'm particularly interested in.

There have been Times when a woman has been sucking my cock and she tries to Deep Throat me, get ALL of it in. And -- bless her -- she tries and she tries, she opens her jaws wider than she ever thought she could, but she Can't Quite Get There.

But she keeps trying, and there is sloppy saliva in strands like lubricious spider webs, there is muffled gagging, there is AMBITION.

I tell her it's Okay, your disability to get all of my cock down your throat does not make me think any less of you as a Woman.

The PUA community doesn't teach men how to dominate women. It teaches men some women are self-absorbed narcissists who can be easily manipulated by pointing out their flaws. That, and the better you present yourself, the more physically attractive the women interested in you will be.

Eric the Fruit Bat: I think that it was a line delivered by Denethor [sp?] to Gandolf, and it was supposed to be damning by it's misapplication.

Yes, indeed, and so all the more ironic, considering that Denethor's "wisdom" was, in fact, insanity brought on by looking into a Palantir. In the film's documentary material, Tom Shippey, who has a number of insightful things to say about the nature of the One Ring and Tolkien's conception of evil that, whether wittingly or not, greatly underscore the influence of Tolkien's Catholicism on the story, claims that looking into a Palantir shows you something true, but encourages you to draw the wrong conclusion. But I don't have any idea what, from the source material, supports the latter conclusion. Rather, I think everyone who looks into a Palantir simply falls into the very human (or Hobbit, or Elven, or...) habit of overinterpreting what they see. Denethor has seen Frodo captured by the Orcs in Cirith Ungol after his encounter with Shelob. He therefore assumes that the One Ring is, or very soon will be, back in Sauron's hands, and all is therefore lost. Coupled with the loss of Boromir and the mind-bending power of looking into a Palantir at all, this has driven him insane.

I mention this at some length because, frankly, even after having read the books dozens of times, it was only John Noble's classically Shakespearean performance in the films that allowed me to understand what had happened to him, why he believed what he believed, why he was so distraught over Boromir and dismissive of Faramir, and why, ultimately, he committed suicide in his delusion. I still can't find any sympathy for him. But I no longer find him simply incomprehensible.

"In the end, what “The Selfishness of Others” lays out most clearly is not the danger of narcissism but, rather, the danger of any particular world view that requires, for the sake of consistency, its owner to believe that she is good."

It's perhaps worth pointing out that this is exactly, and explicitly, the ethos of "The Others" on "Lost." Consider all the times Benjamin Linus simply says, straightforwardly, "We're the good guys" or "We're not bad people." If you made it through all six seasons, you have a lot of information as to why Ben needed to tell himself, and therefore others, that.